Recap for 2007

So 2007 was a year of adaptation. I was learning alot at my job since I was required to be licensed by summer. I took my Series 6 license in March and passed my 63 license in May. I also started to work with Pensions in October... so looking back on 2007, my career definitely moved forward.

My daughter spent her first full summer in Texas while doing her Marketing internship. It had been a long time since we spent the full summer together and it was very nice. Now she is back to school completing her junior year and getting ready to go to Japan this summer.

Looking back I can see that Summer was definietly the most challenging time for my reading but I still kept a good pace and I made a dent on my TBR pile. Let's take a closer look....

I read a total of 128 books this year, Higher than last but lower than the previous 3 years. I think this was a good pace for me and I feel I have found my rhythm.

I discovered 29 new authors! My favorite first reads were from Authors suggested on my Reading group through the Author of the Month program. Jo Goodman wow'd me with A Season to be Sinful and Diane Perkins was a jewel in The Improper Wife. I also discovered Jonathan Stroud's YA series called Bartimaeus and although I really loved his work, the ending of the series stopped me from naming him among my great discoveries for 2007.

This was not a good year for series, but I did discover one that made me pickup all the books and read them within a few weeks, Gaelan Foley's Knight Miscellany. The lowest grade any of them got was a B which was Jacinda's story. I did make a dent on a few other series I had already started. Ward's Brotherhood series is still the best series I have read. They have all passed into my keeper pile and I don't foresee tiring of them. I read three more books from the Carpathian series so now I have the first four under my belt. I really hope I don't tire of them since I have all the books. They have to be read in small doses, though, not like Ward's Brotherhood or Kenyon's Dark Hunters, which I also attacked this year, reading 3 more of them as well as a few of the short stories from the anthologies.

Talking about Anthologies... I still dislike them. I didn't meet my goal of reading 1 a month. I read 6 anthologies (less than last year) and of those only two got higher than a C (Wish List and Midnight Pleasures). I have found that I don't have too many of them left in my TBR pile so I'm keeping that particular goal off of my 2008 resolutions.

Favorite Authors for 2007 were Gaelan Foley (as mentioned above) who consistently delivered on her promise for excellence. J.R. Ward gave me two new Brotherhood books and a few other stories as Jessica Bird. Lisa Scottoline, Linda Fairstein, Laura Lee Guhrke, Philip Pullman, Christine Feehan and Sherrilyn Kenyon round off the favorites for this year.

Now on with some stats...
I read 6 Ebooks & 20 Audiobooks.
I reread 2 books (Navin's Meet Me at Midnight & Maxwell's The Marriage Contract)
My best reading month: December with 16 reads
Worse Reading Month: July with just 7
I read a total of 44,667 pages in the year for an average of 349 pages per book.

This year I read many more historicals than last year. 49.2% of my reading were historicals, 36.7% were Regency era. I read 30.5% Contemporaries and 19.5% Alt. Reality/Fut/Fantasy.

The majority of my readings came from publishings in the last 5 years with the most being published in 2006, closely followed by new releases in 2007.

For 2008 I would like to read just as many books as I read this year. It was a good amount without it taking away from other activities. I don't have any real goals for this year, maybe post more on my blog.. at least once a month with the AOM reading. Other than that... pickup less new books than those that I have read.

Happy Reading in 2008!!!

Update and Recap for 2006

I'm back with a new home and a new vigor to document my readings for the year 2007. As you can see, it's been a while since I last posted on this blog but not for lack of interest. Some might now have known but I recently moved from NH to TX.

This was definitely a big life change since I sold the house that had been our home for over 7 year (the most stable home my daughter had ever known) and bought a beautiful place in the Fort Worth Area in TX. With the move it was not just the house I left behind but also my job. I loved working as a technical support engineer with Progress Software but I wanted to see if I could make a change in the direction my career was going.
Moving to TX gave me a chance for a new start in life and I have been enjoying the ride thus far.

Here is a picture of our new home.

Now that I'm finally settled in and have had a chance to fall into some semblance of a routine I think I can pick up my reviews again.

During the time I have been away I have not stopped reading but my reading definitely suffered a bit for lack of material and for lack of a comfortable setting.

Last weekend I was able to pull out my books and find them a home. I discovered that I am ready to move away from some authors that just are not doing it for me anymore. Catherine Coulter is one of them and Stephanie Laurens as well. These two authors have given me many hours of contented reading but I have found that most of their books follow some pattern and they eventually have melded together to a point that it feels as if I'm reading the same story over and over. The worse part of this is that I had collected most of their backlist which is very long. Now I have all these books that I really don't want to read. I think I'm just going to put them up on ebay and not dwell upon the $ I have lost.

Recap of 2006:

Recaping my reading for 2006 has been soooo much easier this year because my friend Rosario shared her spreadsheet to keep track of the books read in the year. This makes it quite simple to see at a glance any trends in my reading.

Total books Read in 2006: 103
Total New Authors: 27 (That was a big surprise to me!)
Total re-reads: 1 (so that means 102 were new reads!)
Best Reading Month was April with a total of 18 books read.
Worst Month was November with 0 books read.

I read an average of 227 physical pages since I listened to 31 Audio books.
I read mostly contemporaries with 48.5% going to that category and 10.7% of my reads were Alt. Reality/ Fantasy and the rest were some sort of historical (40.8%)

The bulk of my reading was from books published in the last 5 years with 27 of them being published in 2005

Sweetest finds for me were Pamela Clare and JR Ward. Both authors consistently showed their talent, book after book I read of theirs.

Goal for the New Year will be the same as last, which I honestly must say I did well at (while I was reading consistently).
I would like to read an average of 1 Anthology a month. That would put me at 12 Anthologies read at the end of the year and would put a significant dent in all the anthologies I have in my TBR pile.

I had wanted to finish two series this year but I could not even make a dent in them. So I want to commit myself to making a dent in the Carpathian series by Feehan. I'm giving up on the Cynster series; I think I have lost my love for those characters.

So I start a new year with a new outlook and new reading goals. With that said... let the reading begin!!!

End of Year Summary...

This past year (2005) I read a total of 178 books, which averages out to approximately 143/4 books a month.

Of those, 48 were Audio books which averages out to 4 Audiobooks a month and 25 were ebooks which is approximately 2 ebooks a month.

My Best Month was September with 25 reads.
My Worst Month was a tie between Feb & March w/ only 9 reads each

I had a fairly great year where there was not one D grade in all my readings, although I did stop reading one because I was too bored to care, but the writing itself was not bad enough to give it a D. So it got a C-. The book was Mary Jo Putney's A Kiss of Fate

One thing I noticed while doing my round up was the amount of anthologies I read. I don't like to read anthologies but I read 7 of them this year so that was a definite improvement over last year.

I read about 40 new authors and among them were Laura Kinsale, NinaBangs, Lisa Marie Rice, Maggie Shayne, SEP, Linda Fairstein, Lisa Scottoline, Mary Janice Davidson, Julianne MacLean, Loretta Chase, Christina Dodd, Lora Leigh, Sherri L. King, Sarah McCarty, Susan Donovan, Marianne Stillings, Cheryl St. John, Elizabeth Rolls, Kathryn Caskie, Laura Lee Guhrke, Amelia Grey, Elizabeth Lowell, Susan Kearney, Lynn Viehl and Suzanne Enoch.

My two favorite books this year were Flowers from the Storm by Laura Kinsale and Diana Gabaldon's A Breath of Snow & Ashes

I started reading Feehan's Carpatian Series but never got around to reading the next book after Dark Prince. I guess I should tackle that series early this year since it's so long.

My favorite series this year would have to be spilt in to three Suzanne Enoch's Lesson in Love, Sherri L. King's Hordes War and Susan Elizabeth Phillips' Chicago Stars series.

My resolution this year is to finish two long running series which have been sitting in my TBR pile. I want to finish the Cynster series (aprox 8 left) and the Carpathian series (all of them left, except the first story).

When it comes to how many books I would like to read... I just hope to have a year without flops regardless if I read 20 or 200 books in 2006.

Happy 2006!

End of Year Review - 2005

Holy crap! Can you believe it's been over six months since I last updated? Well... I guess you can since there aren't any entries since May.

New year and new hopes as too my reading blog. I guess I just find myself chatting too much about the books I'm reading vs actually reading.

Here is the breakdown for last years reading:

181 total reads. 46 Audiobooks & 5 ebooks

Best month: January w/ 19 reads

Worst month: February w/ 11 reads

Discovered Sherrilyn Kenyon & Jo Beverley this year.

The Dark Hunter Series was consistently the best, followed by the Mallorens and The Bedwyn Series.
The books in these series consistently got exceedingly high marks.

My favorites this year have been:

Darkling, I listen By Katherine Sutcliffe

Envy by Sandra Brown

Lord of the Storm by Justine Davis

All The Queen's Men by Linda Howard

Funny that my favorite books this year have been mostly contemporaries, while I read mostly historicals.

Worse of the bunch:

Sandra Hill's Love Me Tender

Jane Feather's Widow Kiss

Katherine Sutcliffe's Fever

Weird that Katherine Sutcliffe was among my favorites as well as my worse. LOL!

I went to Barnes & Nobles tonight and picked up Sherrilyn Kenyon's new book Sieze the Night. I thought it best to start the year off right. This is the story of Valerius and Tabitha. Loving it!

I then plan to read the rest of Susan Krinard's Historical Wolf series. I loved the first in the series and need to read the rest. She is such an intense writer.

I hope to update more but you never know...